


More Today than Yesterday

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Post Bartlett Administration, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:38:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: This was honeymoon sex.





	More Today than Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

  
Author's notes: Spoilers through end of series

 

Not mine, never were, never will be, but they consume my soul

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75T6kkXDqOA

Feedback and criticism always welcomed  


* * *

_June 9, 2017; Whitsunday Islands, Australia_

CJ woke to the faint sounds of birds chirping and gentle waves breaking on the beach. Her eyes still closed, she saw the red glow of the sun on her eyelids and felt its warmth beating down on her. Although it was almost winter in the southern hemisphere, just a few days until the solstice, the weather was tropical. A slight breeze stirred the cotton sarong she was wearing.

Then the rosiness was blocked out, as if a cloud had come over the sun. But the warm breeze grew warmer still, and slightly more intense. A long familiar scent stirred at her nostrils and she opened her eyes to see those of her husband smiling down at her.

"What time is it?" CJ asked Danny. The smile in his eyes reached his mouth as he brushed back a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

"Claudia Jean," Danny admonished softly, using his thumb to rub against her lips.

"I'm sorry," CJ said.

"Okay, but that's the last time," Danny laughingly chided. "The next time - ." He left the sentence unfinished but lightly, playfully, put his hand on the side of her hip.

Three days ago, when they first arrived, Danny had taken their watches and locked them in the safe in the cottage bedroom. For the two weeks of this second (actually, fourth or fifth by now) honeymoon, there would be no hourly time for the two of them. There was a digital clock in the living room that displayed the day of the week, but that was as accurate an indication of the passing of time that the two of them would have.

Everyone had said how utterly romantic it sounded. Six weeks ago, during the party that CJ, Danny, Frank, and Diana had given to celebrate Paddy's and Maggie's First Communion, Danny described what he had arranged for the two of them.

It was indeed a little cottage like the one in "The Thornbirds", isolated on the shore of one of the still privately owned islands in the chain. There was a telephone by which the two of them could summon housekeeping, meals, or food supplies, but there would be no regularly scheduled visits from the resort staff. CJ and Danny would be expected to phone in to leave a message twice a day so the management would know that everything was okay, and there would be unobtrusive flyovers and boat patrols, but for all intents and purposes, the two of them would be alone.

"I'm envious!" exclaimed Timmy Jenkins' fiancée. Timmy laughed good-naturedly. The two of them had decided to take an Alaskan cruise next summer after their wedding, but he wondered if Sienna has having second thoughts about the destination.

"Indeed," Ken Robbins agreed. "But a trip like that, it seems more like something for a twenty-fifth." He and Laura would be doing a Pacific Island cruise later in the year for a belated silver anniversary observance.

"And if CJ and I had had the blessing to find each other and to marry when we were twenty-five or thirty, then perhaps that would have been my plan," Danny said. He was half-sitting, half-reclining on a chaise in the courtyard. CJ was sitting between his legs, her back against his chest. "But the love of my life," Danny reached down and lightly kissed CJ's shoulder, "and I got a late start. I don't want to wait another fifteen years before giving CJ the honeymoon she always wanted. Life is too short, too precious, too uncertain."

There was a shriek as a group of kids – Mei-Ling, Caitlin, Pammy, Manny, Dafna, and Will – came tearing from the pool area and family room, followed by Paddy and Maggie with the super-soakers Frank's brother Tonio had given the kids as a First Communion present. The hunted ran back outside; the hunters stopped by the door, laughed, and hugged each other.

"Well, those two, they may have their twenty-fifth before the two of you had your first," Frank commented. "Those pictures this morning, I think it wasn't the last time with your son in a suit and my little girl in a white dress."

CJ thought back to the morning's First Communion festivities. All the boys were in navy suits, with white shirts and ties. Even though she knew that within six months, she would be donating Paddy's pants and jacket to St. Monica's children's clothing exchange, CJ couldn't help but think that her son was the handsomest and sweetest little guy of the class. Maggie was in a simple white dress, sleeveless, mid-calf length, with embroidered white roses around the natural waist, the scoop neckline, and armholes. She wore an old lace mantilla pinned to her hair. Whereas the one that Nancy had worn four years ago when she and Jesse were married was full-length and was an heirloom of the Muñoz family, this one would have been just shoulder-length on an adult woman and belonged to Diana's family.

After the class picture and the individual pictures with Father Luke, they took pictures of Paddy and Maggie together. At one point, Danny posed Maggie sitting on a chair with Paddy kneeling beside her on one knee and CJ was struck by how wedding-like the tableau seemed. Maggie was barely eight, and Paddy was about a month shy of that, but looking at them, she just knew that someday - .

Now, on the third full day of her latest honeymoon, CJ blushed a little as she realized that since arriving and calling the kids (before Danny put their cell phones in the same safe beside the watches) that first evening, she really hadn't thought about them at all. She knew they were safe and happy, with Dario and Hayley down from Napa to house-, kid-, and dog-sit.

The cottage was quaint and modern at the same time. There was air-conditioning, but there were also ceiling fans in all the rooms, and the two of them lived and slept with the screened windows open. There was a complete kitchen, a dining table inside, and two tables on the wide veranda that ran all the way around the cottage, one outside the bedroom, one outside the living room. The little boat that deposited them at the site on the first evening also brought them dinner from the resort's kitchen, but the two of them had eaten from the well-stocked refrigerator since then. The first two mornings, Danny had brought her fruit and juice in bed. This morning, she had returned the favor. The bath was modern, with only a shower, but there was a hot tub on the veranda outside the bedroom. And there was always the ocean. She thought that perhaps it was time to send for housekeeping, for more supplies, and maybe for a light but romantic supper, all to arrive at sunset.

In addition to the electric lights, there were oil lamps and tiki torches, and a small grill for steaks, or any fish they might catch.

While doing research online, if she had done the math right, converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit, she had figured that the temperature range should have been about 65 to 72. They had packed for that, with Danny wishing aloud that they could have made the trip in December when the weather would be high summer. But when they arrived in Brisbane, they apparently brought a heat wave with them, and, again if she was doing the math right, the days were in the high 80's and the nights no lower than 79. Not that she was complaining.

The management of the resort supplied them with the sarongs and she and Danny had spent the time in them, his tied around his waist, hers sometimes tied like a toga, sometimes at her waist. She had seen neither bra nor panties since five minutes after the boat left that first night.

They slept, they swam. They walked the beach and built sand castles. There was a small collection of books, and a few movies to watch on the completely modern television. (Naturally, there was both a book and a DVD of "The Thornbirds".)

And they made love. In the room. On the veranda. In the hot tub. On the beach. In the water. Morning. Night. Noon. Mid-morning. Mid-afternoon. Midnight.

In fact, the last thing CJ remembered before waking a few minutes ago was riding her husband, their genitalia shielded by their garments, and climaxing so hard she saw stars. Their sex life had always been good, except for those few weeks right after Paddy was born, but it had morphed into "married with children" sex. **This** was honeymoon sex; excellent honeymoon sex.

"Can I at least ask how long I've been asleep?"

"Long enough for this," Danny growled, pulling off his wrap to reveal himself rampant and rock-hard. He untied CJ's sarong and kissed his way from neck to breastbone to stomach to the place that made her writhe with pleasure.

"On your stomach, beloved," Danny whispered, and, pushing one hand gently underneath and reaching for her core, he gently inserted himself inside her and covered her back with his body.

_Later_

CJ sipped from the glass of cognac, looked at the bottle on the table, and decided to add just a splash or two more to her glass. She had come to prefer the liqueur that Ashling had helped concoct for the MacDonald Distilleries, but Danny had neglected to procure a bottle for the trip.

The remains of the meal the two of them had finished about 40 minutes ago – a small rack of lamb, broiled tomatoes, lightly steamed spinach, a local Shiraz unavailable in the States, a sinfully decadent chocolate mousse – were beginning to draw flying critters, so she gathered up everything except the cognac and the snifters onto the tray left by the resort staff. CJ glanced toward the shore, making sure that Danny was still visible in the surf before taking everything inside.

When CJ came back outside, the moon had risen over the tree line, so she turned off the lights on the porch. Looking again to the beach, she saw Danny standing in the waters. He waved to her, inviting her to join him. Laughing, she shook her head from side to side (she still believed the old warnings against swimming too soon after a meal even if he didn't) and waved back.

As her husband resumed his exercise, she thought back to the previous Saturday, when they had renewed their marriage vows during the Vigil Mass. Father Luke had warned them beforehand, so they were ready when he asked them to speak personalized expressions of love to each other before the more formal pledges. At the altar, she had told Danny that, ten years ago, she thought she loved him completely, utterly, beyond all measure. But the love in her heart that day in Santa Barbara in 2007 was only a shadow of what was currently in her heart.

"There's an old Elvis song, from _Blue Hawaii_ ," she told him. "It goes 'I love you more today, more today than yesterday. But I love you less today, less than I will tomorrow.' That is what I know to be true, Daniel Michael Fabian Concannon."

In response, Danny told her that although he sometimes wished that she had been more open to his advances in 1999, he treasured every moment they would have together on this planet. He told her that he was, and would always be, the luckiest man on God's green earth.

So now, as she had done two or three times over the past ten years, CJ once again wondered about the life they would have led had she said "Okay" at the beginning of Jed Bartlet's administration. More children? Probably, had God ordained. They could have afforded them, even though their combined incomes would most likely have been less than what they were now making. Knowing Danny, he would have still been a successful writer and would probably have gone on to teaching, but she would not, in all likelihood, have been on Frank Hollis' radar he started looking for someone to be in charge of saving the world. Maybe she would have been considered for the Foundation's PR offices, but it wouldn't have paid what she had earned while working on the Hollywood publicity whirlwind. Not that she would have wanted to go back to that life.

Still, they could have managed. After all, look at the others on the block. She and Danny were easily the family with the most income, and even without her earnings from the foundation, they would have been no less than third. As a senior partner in a successful law firm, Ken Robbins made about three-fourths of what she and Danny pulled in together; Hank and Steve were in the same ballpark. But the others, well, most of them were probably in the one to two hundred thousand range. And the Jenkins twins were paying off med school loans.

The trips to Ireland would have been less frequent, and those trips, as well as the ones to Ginger and Rick's reunions on Cape May, would have been coach instead of first class. She might have bought a First Communion suit from the clothing exchange for a fast-sprouting Paddy as well as donating to it. And they probably would have put the money from Brianna's land into the kids' education funds rather than the place in Albion.

Eight more years with Danny, eight more years of his body in hers, around hers, over hers. Eight more years of his love, his unwavering support. No MS crisis with which to deal, no Shareef, no kidnapping, no San Andreo. No stalker, no dead Simon.

But, in the end, CJ knew that the experience of those intervening years had made both of them more complete persons, more appreciative of what they did have, more excruciatingly aware of how precious were their love and their lives together. In any event, what was done, was done. They were happy; they were deliriously happy.

Danny left the water. As he walked toward her, the moonlight played on his hair, on his naked body, on his face. It was a full moon and the silvery, shimmering colors reminded her of that Christmas after she had won the Nobel, when the lights of the tree mimicked the _aurora borealis_ they had not been able to see in Norway, that, so far, they had never seen. The time was right for the southern lights, the _aurora australis_ , but the latitude wasn't. Danny had mentioned something about arranging to fly down to the Antarctic Circle to see them on this trip. Perhaps, perhaps not. Being able to afford such things was another benefit of the money they had as a result of the lives they did lead for the eight years between meeting and marriage.

She knew that she would love him more tomorrow, would love him more each of the tomorrows God would give them.

But her body shook with the realization of how much she loved him today. Her body shook with the realization of how much she loved him now.

As he collapsed in the chair beside her, she stood, knelt in front of him.

"I love you, Danny," she whispered.

And proceeded to show him with her mouth, her hands, and her hair exactly how much.

For now, for today.


End file.
